


passer

by sketchnurse



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Captivity, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 08:51:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2462192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sketchnurse/pseuds/sketchnurse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you in this life."</p>
            </blockquote>





	passer

“But I can give you a new one.”

When he reaches down, it isn’t to draw a knife. He takes both of her hands and she shudders, twists her head slightly downward, flinches. She feels a thumb stroking her skin until she squeezes her fingers and looks up, eyes wide. She sees him, looking at her with tenderness and mercy, and she isn’t any less frightened. She knows what he is.

And he thinks he knows her.

 

Most of the time, she stays in the basement, in a darkest corner. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t also find herself roaming the rest of the house while Hannibal cooks downstairs, often with an infinitely old record playing music she doesn’t feel like she belongs with. Sunlight peeks around every corner; she imagines eyes peering in through the window. Hannibal notices this right away.

“Do you think they can all see you?” He asks his questions with a biting edge she comes to realize is done without malice and almost unconsciously, as though it, and not the polite and measured tones from before, were his true and natural voice.

“Surveillance isn’t something they can do right now, Abigail.” But she can’t really believe him anymore. Too often she sees his words unravelling as they come from his mouth, dancing in front of her eyes like one of Will’s visions. He is like her father, and his words do not mean what you would think they mean.

He wouldn’t leave her out in the open if it wasn’t safe, is the most likely truth. But she doesn’t know. She can’t be sure that they’re not all circling round, ready to jump out and snare them when the time is right. There was space for a conspiracy more, and she pictures herself hearing that the FBI had never learned what she did, that her mother had survived, that Will was the only reason Hannibal had ever done anything for her.

(That last one, she thinks, would give her the least surprise)

He knows what frightens her. He never hurts her with his hands, but he does hurt her with his words. He never forces himself behind her to whisper too loud and too wet into her ear, but she feels his voice right up at the back of her neck all the same. It’s all to control her, of course. Never because he wants to make her feel like the girl on the train again, only because he believes he is making her safe, doing the best thing for her, curbing the instinct to run that must still exist within her.

She never forgets that he could have killed her. She never forgets that he may have to, still.

 

“Where would you go, Abigail?” he asks her while she stares out the window in the back, at the unnervingly clean alleyway. He asks her with that bite, but she thinks she hears sadness, too. Him knowing that she is not here as her first choice.

She thinks that Will would have taken her, if he weren’t in prison.  But of course, that’s another snare set for her, to sew her into place in Hannibal’s design. She can see more and more of his machinations from inside the lion’s den, and it’s a rare gift that she, too, doesn’t want.

She does take it. Every little piece of the puzzle that he shows her she stores away, in case one day someone will need it. Maybe they’ll find her, and need her so much so that she’s offered protection, against what she’s done and Hannibal could do.

 

He shows her a sketch. It is a man, a judge, with his heart and his brain on scales. When she looks at it she feels something twist inside of her, something that feels like it is locking into place.

“Is it for Will?” she asks, already learned out of dreading the answer.

He smiles, and sets it down. Before her is a cup of tea, two scones and a smear of Devonshire cream. She knows what he’s doing. He’s making her crave meat.

“The metaphor—is it too heavy-handed?” She knows now how obsessed he is with his artistry. Dangerously, stupidly obsessed.

She looks up. She looks him right in the eye, like she knows she has to.

“I thought nothing was heavy-handed in court.” she tells him, and waits for him to kiss her forehead, as he does when she is strong. He doesn’t disappoint. His lips are soft and warm, like her father’s had always been. Not like Will’s, chapped and dry and nearly always shaking. Hannibal and her father should have been afraid of what they were, but they weren’t. They killed and they ate, and their carrion was worth nothing, and their prizes were priceless, gold-plated and rare under their gaze. In the middle of their visions she felt different, marked, twisted. Only in Will’s eyes had she felt like a father’s daughter. 

Hannibal tells her often that she will see Will again, when they are all ready. That they will leave America and the FBI behind, start new lives (continue Abigail’s) and never be torn from each other again.

She is usually obedient, smart as she is. She does what he says as often as she can, and gives away more secrets, tells him of every dark part living within her. She thinks of Freddie Lounds and the smart girls she must have known, and strives to be the best of them. She doesn’t tell Hannibal the most important thing for him to know, the one that will ruin everything for him. She doesn’t tell him that within Will is too much mercy to fall completely prey to the murder that lives there also.

She knows she won’t survive him finding out.

She hopes Will does. In the darker nights, when all she hears is the hum of the fridges and the small sounds the old house makes above her, she hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> passer- to go, to pass, to happen


End file.
